Informaticopia

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Web 2.0 at BCS Bristol

This evening I attended a meeting of the BCS Bristol branch at which Mike Farrow gave an interesting talk of the development, and possible future direction of Web 2.0.

He used several examples, often involving Amazon, of how getting user involvement in writing content, reviews etc can enhance the usefulness of a web site, and improve its commercial potential.

He also talked about blogs, wikis, tagging and RSS feeds as examples of existing technologies and about REST and AJAX (which i need to find out more about) as emerging technologies, which may influence the future moves towards the true semantic web.

The presentation and question and answer session had more emphasis on business models and company profits than I felt comfortable with - but it may have been right for the audience.

One useful tidbit which i picked up over coffee was about the forthcoming Internet Explorer Version 7 including it's RSS reader, for release around Christmas, which will move towards the standards based approach of FireFox and others - but will mean that web sites built around previous IE extensions may not be visible to those using the new version of IE. (For further discussion on compatibility issues etc see Microsoft and Internet Explorer vs. web standards and others.)

Open Source EMR Projects List (#01)

Open Source emr Projects .. Seems Promising but is that Pro as The paid ones? many of Open Source EMR projects developed using Interpreted languages as PHP depends on mySQL as DB system … that`s make it work online as well .. Open source EMRs still didn`t get all the Features of the Open source systems .. still quiet solid not that interactive for the developers who wanna to add Plugins of features ..Modularity system still in progress … i get that Opinion after i tested over 4 EMRs ..

Monday, September 18, 2006

Which CMS is Fit as Medical CMS?

alot of free Open source CMS (Content Management System) all over the web but which one is could use for medical resources?

that`s Q. some one email me to post about the answer..

The Effective CMS features :

Good Plugin and addons support

Web 2.0 Features

Easy Multimedia Integration

Rss Notification

gallery Integration support

easy Integration with other scripts as forums , blogs

Search Friendly

Themes made easy and good themes support

Good User System.

easy friendly Control Panel

Email Notifications

Good Security and bugs tracking support

Multi Lingual support

Just simple answer That`s depends on the Content..you wanna this CMS to hold .

-for Medical portal Included Medical Community :You should Use Compatible system .. to save time The CMS should contain Forums , News system ...articles system

Some sites make The forums alone .... make the user confused 2 User systems included one for the CMS and the other for the forums ...

so what CMS could use as Medical Portal ?

Mambo .. easy CMS and Quality Themes and Plugins support Including forums ,News and articles ...RSS support

Joomla.. coming from the Mambo easy and Powerful support for themes , plugins and Security enhanced . RSS support

Php-Fusion .. Including Forums , Links manager , Categorized news , articles and Download section.... and Photo gallery as well .. easy Control Panal and Good Plugin support alot of themes available. RSSPlugin

e107.. Simple to use with Powerful support with Powerful Control Panal .RSS support

Xoops simple and easy to use .. good plugins and themes support . RSS support

-News system :News system Features

News Categorization

News Archive - Or Advanced Archive system ...Weekly , Monthly or by Category

Calender

RSS notification

Search Friendly

Simple and easy to Navigate

Multimedia Support to add Multimedia News or Podcasts / Vodcasts .

News Via Email ..

good Themes and plugins support.

you can Use simple blog ... regarding you may add media in It so look for good plugins support ... The blog Interface ? if you using the Wordpress it`s easy to customize the blog look to anything you want.

News systems :

Wordpress ..Categorized Posts system .. Plenty of Themes and Plugins support ....Multimedia support ... RSS feed... Interactive Posts system (Comments) .. Archive support and advanced Archive Plugins .... Gallery support with easy Integration to other CMS and forums ..... Podcasts Support .. search Friendly and Permalinks Options

There is Huge lake of Medical online Free Documents :( i remember at The first year at the medical school ... it was so hard to find Presentations , Documents etc.. but now there is many DMS available but almost no Medical uses yet :(

Note :

Filebrowser from Lussumo .. It`s no DMS ... it`s just Powerful PHP script to browse the files and the folders ... and Preview some types of files like SWF - Why i did list it here ? to exclude the difference ( ) The DMS and The simple scripts.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Easy Interactive Multimedia Presentation and Medical Tutorials

MultiMedia Builder .. I used This tool to creat some CD presentation before but it`s more than that ... IT`S easy to use and quiet fast .you can use it to creat small Interactive Medical Presenations .. in mins... and more than that ... it`s export the project as Stand alone file "EXE" what can Multimedia Builder do more?

Feasibility of combining e-health for patients with e-learning for students using synchron

The latest edition of the Journal of Advanced Nursing contains an interesting paper by Ray Jones, Heather Skirton and Miriam McMullan from the School of Nursing and Community Studies, Faculty of Health and Social Work, University of Plymouth.

The study aimed to to introduce and evaluate methods for using information and communication technologies to involve academic staff, students, and patients in a common synchronous e-learning environment, by evaluating three synchronous technologies: (1) non-commercial satellite interactive television (TV); (2) Internet videoconferencing; and (3) webcasting, through feasibility studies of 'TV-style' panel discussions on health topics and seminars with interaction with viewers by e-mail, inter-site research meetings with face-to-face interaction, user surveys and literature reviews.

They found that Interactive satellite TV required the booking of rooms with specialized receiving equipment. This limited accessibility contributed to the high cost per participant. Videoconferencing proved acceptable for cross-site research meetings and is proposed for joint meetings for doctoral students with overseas centres but has the same access issues as interactive satellite TV. Webcasting is accessible to most users with Internet access and provides a feasible means of delivery of synchronous interactive material, concluding that; Webcasting proved the most acceptable way of supporting a common synchronous environment.

Sally opened by comparing the drivers for the increased use of elearning in the NHS and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and concluded that they are very similar. An overview of the advantages and disadvantages of elearning followed with consideration of some of the principles which surround them. Maggie then followed with consideration of some of the practical issues, including; intellectual property rights, firewalls, delivery mechanisms, accreditation, funding, private partners and sponsors using examples from her development of a simulation for infusion devises training.

The next speaker was Nicki Davis a junior doctor from United Bristol Healthcare Trust , who described "A day in the life of an elearner" based on focus groups held with junior doctors in the trust. The results were similar to other similar studies with doctors and other health professionals, suggesting that there are issues of access, time and motivation for the use of elearning and pleading for developers to take the needs of the users into account.

Accessing Core Learning? Let us give you a CLU was the next presentation from June Lancaster, Director of the NHS Core Learning Unit, which grew from the ashes of the NHS university and provides some statutory and mandatory training materials and is developing a common induction programme for the NHS. She highlighted issues surrounding quality and consistency and briefly mentioned work on making the learners record link with the NHS Electronic Staff Record (ESR) when it has been built. Their courses are available from http://home.teknical.com/nhselearn however this requires users to say which Strategic Health authority and trust they work for therefore registration for those in higher education etc is difficult/impossible.

This was followed by a short "comfort break" however no coffee was made available!!

The first session after the break was by Veronica Vernon, from Edge Hill University, Ormskirk. She described the work of the SOLSTICE CETL and demonstrated the use of podcasting in a course for student nurses about the patients journey following diagnosis with breast cancer. Particular issues which were highlighted included the place in the curriculum (this component is not compulsory or assessed) and the partnership models of working between academics, clinicians and technologists. The key role of the patient experience was put across with excerpts from patient interviews.

Annmaria MacRury, from NHS Quality Improvement Scotland in conjunction with NHS Education for Scotland then described work she is undertaking for e-learning the ABC of clinical governance in Scotland. The development issues and problems she described were similar to a range of similar projects.

The final session of the morning was Elearning and the NHS: The strategic imperative by John Bewick, (NHS South West) who talked about some of the strategic directions for the NHS including globalisation, social and organisational changes and left the audience the challenge of considering the role of elearning in achieving these.

A limited lunch was then provided but it did provide an opportunity to visit the exhibitors stands, read the posters and catch up with friends and colleagues from around the country about their current projects.

After lunch there were four parallel sessions. As I was chairing the session on E-learning at the leading edge, I was not able to attend the others and can only report on those in my session:

NHS distance learning shouldn't cost an arm and a leg by Garfield Lucas(of Garfnet) & Roz Tritton Wessex Deanery & Oxford Deanery, was really a passionate argument for the use of open source tools in healthcare education with examples from the DEOSS site for dental vocational trainers including a dummy portfolio. The lively question and answer session triggered debates about security and support costs for using this sort of software.

Louise Terry and colleagues from South Bank University then described the research they had carried out into the use of video conferencing with nursing and healthcare management students taking an ethics course. Practical and pedagogical issues were discussed and the differences between the students in the UK and US highlighted. Technical issues about firewalls had meant the use of a private supplier and specialist equipment had meant increased costs which, in the final analysis, had probably not provided value for money. Some of the comments about the characteristics of the learners and their views of synchronous and asynchronous communication methods were particularly interesting.

Malcolm McClean a GP tutor from Horsham and Chanctonbury PCT then demonstrated SELF-online (although the URL didn't work when I tried it) as a good example of esignposting to learning in primary care. The site provide links to events and resources which can be used by primary care staff individually and as a groups for their own personal and professional development, and enables them to rate the resources for others.

The final presentation in this session was another evangelist this time Paul Norrish from East Devon PCT who showed (& passed around) a Tablet PC (SLATE) which he has purchased for Health and safety and Food Handling training for his trust. He had found the portability and accessibility helped to overcome problems reaching some staff who have traditionally been underserved by educational provision and suggested this fun and userfriendly approach provided a revolution for elearning.

The final plenary presentations aimed to bring together some of the current and future issues which had been identified during the day. Dr Luisa Dillner, from the BMJ Publishing Group, considered some of the issues in working with commercial partners using examples from BMJ Learning, including highlighting the expertise and resources which commercial elearning providers can bring. She particularly highlighted the use of high quality (but not as expensive as you might think) video and other multimedia in the new foundation pilot site for medical students and considered some potential future developments.

Final Plenary

The final plenary was by Stephen Heppell (see http://www.heppell.net/) who has a long history in the field and gave an amusing view of the past present and future.

He compared policy and institutions & what students will be demanding in a future global digital world. The implications for British education was made explicit.

"Content may not be king but community may be sovereign."

He identified some key issues for universities & described projects like learnometer.net & pointed out the trends.

Workplace learning was a key issue in which communities could support each other. Scholarship changing to learning from others rather than traditional paper based resources - teaching moving to an all doctoral profession and every school is a research institution.

One project was about giving away free global exams for all to demonstrate they can create, critique, collaborate & communicate each individual producing a unique product. Notschool.net was given as an example of how excluded children children can achieve.

No surprises*Terminology ICT etc not relevant to learners*Appeal to some not others*Some technologies fit some instruction - ? use in assessment*Need seamless integration*Needs to feel right

Intriguing insights*Generational differences – not that important – more about personal characteristics*Prefer instant messaging to email*Need to look at what’s being used outside classroom to see how could work best in education *Game playing in early life not influential in impact of game playing on ICT for learning purposes.*Control may be a predictor of digitalness (locus of control stuff)*Problems most about widening participation groups – bight students will use whatever*Web2 technologies more fundamentally transformational than untethered or mobile technologies

*Technologies both creating communities & isolation*May be using to reproduce models of community*Separation of TV for entertainment to education ? same with web-based.

*Constructivist learning/own sense of world v learning outcomes

*Technology fluency may be temporary & situational

Divided into small groups – for discussions

FeedbackLots of issues – from theoretical constructs to practical issues.

Conclusion*A possible model of elearning*Based on a study of self directed learning (what people do when no one is telling them what to do)*Those with passion but not enrolled on formal courses

Piloting the Inernational Virtual Nursing School

This short presentation by Linda Malek from Dundee described initial work on the development of IVINURS which is an international collaboration following the work on IVIMEDS.

What Linda described was some of the issues and lessons learnt from the establishment of a Learning Objects Repository based on the same software as JORUM. The discussion of quality and metadata issues was interesting however she was not able to clarify how the subscription/Business/Financial model makes this an attractive proposition for potential partners.

Shut the polys & return to National Service

"Shut the polys & return to National Service" was a heckle during the question & answer session at the end of the keynote speech by Professor Tim O'shea on New Topologies for learning.

He had presented some history of elearning initiatives and what appeared to be an advertorial for Edinburgh University. One of his concluding and most controversial comments was that the traditional universities (ie Russel Group) were best placed to deliver elearning because of their resources and history - although he admitted they were not good at student support. This really seemed to annoy many of the delegates from post 92 universities, FE and other sectors.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

ALT-C 2006 - let's use the technology workshop

Live blogging from a workshop on 'using the technology'.

Starting late due to the room having been used for another meeting before, this workshop looks like it might be one of the potentially most interesting events of ALT-C 2006. It has a lot of interest - I will be doing some live blogging, so this post will be updated at intervals over the next hour or so.

One of the presenters says this is 'Workshop 2.0 – always beta so you can get away with murder.'

Peter 16:14hrs.

We are currently trying to set up a live chat facility using Gabbly - www.gabbly.comPeter 16:18hrs

We are split into small groups of about 6-7 - doing an exercise on what our interests are in the use of the technologies.

ALT-C 2006 - more on blogs, interaction and support

Rod and I spoke this afternoon as part of a 3 short paper session looking at aspects of using blogs and other support for learners and interaction.

Helen Keegan from University of Salford talked about 'Blogs as a support tool for international mobility students'. The study is part of the ESMOS (www.esmos.org) project Enhancing mobility through online support), a Socrates/Minerva EU-funded project with partners in six countries. Aimed to look at which technologies could be used to provide support. Needs analysis study found a need for support during the study phase when outside their base country.

The reasons for choosing blogs included reflection and group activities, and potential for psychological and social support (inc. for nursing students working in hospital settings different from what they were used to). One group of BSc Nursing students and one group of BA social work students were in the study; Serendipity was used as the blog tool for the social work students, while the nursing students used a Blackboard plug-in. With the nursing group, a feeling of collaborative community of practice was developed, including a collaborative bibliography; students discussed emotive and psychological issues. The students in both groups felt comfortable expressing themselves on the blogs – says they can be used a s support tool.

Rod and I presented on what we have been doing as far as conference blogs - see www.hi-blogs.info for links to some of what we have done.

Sabine Little, University of Sheffield, talked about 'Facilitating inquiry-based learning from afar: educational research in the Caribbean'; not about blogs but other forms of support. She provided a very interesting report on hwo she had been developing a course for critical analysis/thinking/inquiry skills for cohorts of teachers in the Caribbean.

ALT-C2006 – British Sign Language by SMS and video

One of the most interesting sessions I have been to was from Andy Black about using mobile phones and SMS to provide British Sign Language learning and communication; Andy explained that each country has its own sign language. He talked about the context for the work being the shortage of qualified and trainee interpreters, and those who were around tending to work in industry (with better pay) than the education sector; as a result, the needs of students with hearing problems were often not being met.

Deaf learners have found SMS/text messaging to be one of the best recent developments. The work Andy described has been to develop text-based glossaries linked to short video clips that can then be accessed by mobile phone; current examples include www.artsigns.ac.uk; www.sciencesigns.ac.uk; and www.engineeringsigns.ac.uk The aim is to develop 1500 ICT-specific terms, which are based in definitions developed by the British Computer Society (BCS). At present, video clips are in Quicktime and Windows Media formats, but the aim is to convert them to Flash files (as all 1500 will then fit on a 1GB flash drive), which will allow for greater portability and easier use on mobile phones.

ALT-C Exhibition

The symposium I wanted to attend on the wednesday morning discussing the Sudeley paradox was cancelled due to a death in the family of one of the presenters, therefore I spent a little while wandering around the exhibition which was very quiet.Some software suplliers had stands along with JISC, Eduserve, etc with perhaps the most interesting and stimulating activity being a contribution to create origami shapes!

ALT-C2006 - blogs, podcasts, m-learning and things

Blogs seem to be theme of the event this year; last year, one of the delegates noted, they were hardly mentioned, but there are dozens of presentations this year aboiut using blogs in various ways for education. Rosanne Biirney, from Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland gave some early quantitative results from a study of blog use she is doing for a Masters course research project; this seems to be one of the few real studies reported. Andy Pulman and Andy Worth talked about blogging at Bournemouth, although I was a bit concerned about the 'control factor' they seemed to be imposing. Surely, blogging is all about getting out there and trying it, not practising in a controlled and restricted 'safe' environment. If blogging is, as they say, a one-to-many activity, can it also be a social networking activity? - discuss.

Prize for most intriguing title so far? - a poster titled 'There's no meat in the rice pudding: turning students into artisans'

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Online social presence and group cohesion: facilitation styles and support

The next presentation I attended was by 2 of my colleagues from the UWE Faculty of Health and Social Care who presented some of the results of their study using adapted criteria from Rouke et al 2004 Assessing Social Presence in Asynchronous Text-based Computer Conferencing, Journal of Distance Education 14(2) to analyse student comments in the affective, interactive and cohesive domains and looked at how facilitators styles influenced the students comments.

ALTC2006 Wiki & Blog

elearners perspectives

Three short papers with similar themes and aims examined elearning from the users perspective, but were funded by JISC and should be available on their web site.. The first two by Kathryn Trinder et al & Grainne Conole et al used different methods & different populations of students but both found that successful elearning students have strategies to fit their learning in with the rest of their lives & use technology to network. The networking was generally by text & instant messaging rather than email or other systems provided by the educational institution. The Conole et al study found that VLEs were taken for granted & criticised for inconsistency amongst staff. The ideas about elearning also varied by discipline when computer science, medicine, languages and economics students were compared.

The third paper, by Perry Williams, was slightly different in presenting a discourse analysis approach and focusing on agency and social structures ratyher than the technology or interface.

Virtual Ward

Workshop on crating a virtual ward led by Nigel Wynne, Emma Winterman, and Janine Stephenson staff from University of Central England, Faculty of Health

The project was set up as part of their Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) exploring collaboration with NHS trusts.

The resource is at: http://www.virtualward.hcc.uce.ac.uk:8080/virtualWardApp Although a username and password is required. You can use Login ID: ALTC2006 Password: : Working in PartnershipThen select Course: Pre-Reg Nursing Acute Adult GM50C7These should work for the next 2 weeks or so.If you would like to use it after that or need more information or would be a potential partner then please contact Nigel Wynne < Nigel.wynne@uce.ac.uk > for further information.

After an introduction to the process and software, participants were encouraged explore the patient examples which had been created. Following questions further exploration of how this was used within the course and modules.

Discussion considered the linear nature of the workbook which accompanies the software & the potential for expansion. Questions about making it accessible for disabled students identified further work to be done. General issues about paper v electronic resources, submission, student feedback etc etc & how things fit with course design arose from the workshop, which were not specific to this software but showed common issues.

Future developments include more cases and improved interprofessional learning – possibly with the use of video conferencing.

NAO to re-open NPfIT inquiry

The Guardian today reports that 'the National Audit Office (NAO) is to re-examine the NHS's £6.2bn nationwide computer overhaul just two months after giving the 10-year project ... a clean bill of health.'

ALT-C 2006 – opening ceremony

It's 9:30 on a fairly overcast Tuesday morning here on the edge of Edinburgh at Heriot-Watt University. The wireless network seems to work well (once the initial slow set-up was got over); I am sat in the main lecture theatre, which is full.

The opening was started by Rhonda Riachi, from ALT, and Andy Walker, Vice Principal of the university, who welcomed delegates and claimed that the origins of the university make it the eighth oldest in the UK. About 100 of the 600 delegates are from outside the UK.

The first keynote speaker is Dr Diana Oblinger, from EDUCAUSE (http://www.educause.edu/)in the USA. Her talk is titled 'Listening to what we're seeing', and she started by looking at the context of education today. She says that context of the world is shifting, and wonders how education will change. She began by looking at the learners today – are digital, connected, experiential, immediate and social; they have an immediate natural comfort with technology; always connected with colleagues electronically in ways that older generation (inc. educators) are not. Many like to\learn in peer-to-peer situations (horizontal approach) and like interaction and engagement; many are visual and can read images as well as or better than text; often choose to work on things that matter and that might make a difference in the world. She also notes that these are generalisations.

Today's learners show some of the changes happening in our culture (norms and values, etc); multi-modal communication (and often simultaneous) tends to be a norm; many people are increasingly adopting 'do-it-yourself' approaches, eg online banking shopping and learning, as opposed to going to traditional authoritative sources; tools such as mp3 players and timeshifting abilities to watch broadcast media give increasing choice; libraries are not seen as first choice information sources, but learners tend to go to online resources such as Wikipedia, Google, etc. - many of these resources are developed/maintained by 'amateurs'. These cultural changes are affecting people of all ages.

Some of the implications of these changes she covered are:- connecting with students (ie with people)- network and connecting to a network of people and information is more important than knowing content (eg Siemen's 'connectivism' ideas)- social connections and networks- connecting in virtual worlds to practice things that happen in the real world- collaboration by design and the nature of learning spaces.

She spent quite some time looking at ways in which physical spaces were changing, or could be changed, so as to encourage interaction, conversations, and learning. She also emphasised that using technology is not the same as integrating technology for what it might be best used for.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Blogging ALT-C2006

Rod and I will be at the ALT-C 2006 conference this week (http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2006/), which is being held at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. The theme is 'the next generation' (presumably of e-learning. We hope to report back not only general things but anything of specific interest with a health informatics flavour. Phil Candy, Director of Education, Training and Development for NHS Connecting for Health, is supposed to be speaking on the theme 'next generation learners'; it will be interesting to see whether he says anything new or we get the same old tired rhetoric as we have had from Disconnecting for Health and its predecessors over 10 years and more.

We will be giving a paper based in the work tnat we and our colleagues have been doing in the last couple of years on conference blogs.

About

Eclectic news and views on health informatics and elearning, by Rod Ward & colleagues. UK bias but worldwide coverage.
If you want to join the membership so that you can post comments - just let me know rod@rodspace.co.ukReturn to lastest posts